Kim Jong-un Mentioned for the First Time the DPRK Dialogue with Washington Publicly

SEOUL (AFP) - North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un discussed future talks with the US at a party meeting, state media reported on Tuesday (April 10), in his first official mention of dialogue with Washington ahead of a planned summit with President Donald Trump.

Trump agreed last month to a landmark summit with the nuclear-armed North - which would be the first between a sitting US president and a North Korean leader - but no specific dates or venue have been set, with questions mounting over Pyongyang's participation.

At the meeting of party officials on Monday, Kim discussed the "development of the north-south relations at present and the prospect of the DPRK-US dialogue", the official KCNA news agency said, referring to the North by its official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

He delivered a report "on the development of the recent situation on the Korean peninsula", including the separate summit with South Korea to be held later this month, it said.

In a growing rapprochement on the Korean peninsula, Kim is scheduled to meet the South's president Moon Jae In for a rare inter-Korean summit on April 27.
Trump has agreed to meet Kim for a historic US-North Korean summit to discuss denuclearisation as soon as next month.

But the North had remained publicly silent on the US summit since its leader's invitation to talks was delivered to Trump by South Korean officials last month.

As officials in Washington scrambled to prepare for the prospective meeting, the weeks-long silence had reportedly made the White House nervous that Seoul had overstated the North's willingness to negotiate over its own nuclear arsenal.

Kim's remarks on Monday break that public silence, although he did not specifically refer to a ...